10 Years of Nora
by As Expected
Summary: Segments and memories from Ren's point of view reflecting his 10-year friendship with the crazy but lovable Nora Valkyrie. A tiny bit of Renora at the end, oneshot.


A/N: These are short segments/memories from Ren from his 10 years of being friends with Nora. Enjoy!

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Part I

You could pick up quite a bit from being with Nora Valkyrie for less than a minute: she's disastrously spontaneous, overly cheery, extremely talkative, horrifically hyper, dangerously violent, and incredibly strong. And you would probably be fine knowing just that.

That's exactly what Lie Ren thought when he first met her in kindergarten. To him, she was an open book that he really didn't want to put the effort in to read. She was the polar opposite of him and, in his young opinion, rather simple-minded and annoying. So he continued on his merry way as the shy, quiet boy with weird pink eyes and a girly pink highlight who always had his nose stuck into a book half his weight.

It wasn't until 2nd grade that he was proven so very wrong.

"Hey! Look! It's little Renia with her little nose stuck in a book!" The older boy pointed at Ren as his friends guffawed.

Ren's face flushed a bright cherry red as he attempted to keep walking. It was the same boy from the past week: a chubby tall 5th grader with mossy brown hair and squinty rat-like eyes. Every single day, it had been the same thing. The bully would wait in the back of the school, behind the last building and mercilessly tease Ren as he passed by.

"Where do you think your going?" Ren's path was quickly blocked by the boy and his gang.

He tried to sidestep before a smaller boy pushed him down.

"Timmy asked you a question, punk. You'd best answer it," the smaller boy sneered.

"I-I was trying to go home," Ren replied, trying so hard to keep his voice level as he slowly rose his knees, brushing the dirt off his green shirt with shaky hands.

_Don't let them get to you_, he thought to himself. He wasn't new to bullying and had learned that if he didn't show how the words bothered him, they'd generally stop.

"I don't think so, wimp," 'Timmy' snarled, kicking Ren's stomach. Ren fell down in pain, balling into a fetal position.

"Why you so girly, huh?" Another kick.

"You act like a girl and you even look like a girl with your ponytail and pink eyes." His friends joined in, harassing him on the blacktop as he curled up tighter and tighter.

"You always have a book, you nerd." They towered over him, the feeble sun silhouetting them as he looked up with tearful eyes.

"Maybe that's why you don't have any friends." Ren's ribs ached and his stomach churned, making him painfully nauseous.

"You're so path-" Suddenly the words stopped and Ren felt the warmth of the previously covered sun as he heard a body slam into the building behind him.

"Back off!" A distinctively feminine voice snapped Ren out of his confusion.

"Who do you think you are, huh?" Timmy yelled. Ren blinked as he cautiously lifted his head up.

Standing in the sun with her hands on her hips was Nora in all her pink skirted glory, glowing like an angry 7-year-old goddess.

"Someone who thinks you and your friends have stepped way out of line, Timothy Sloan."

The words sounded strange coming out of her mouth but there was still a sense of just righteousness that couldn't be replaced.

Timmy's response was to growl and run headfirst towards the significantly smaller girl. Ren watched with eyes wide as Nora caught Timmy's fist, tugging him forward and kneeing him in the stomach. Stepping to the side, Nora glanced to the rest of the now horrified boys as Timmy fell face first onto the asphalt.

"Anyone else?" She asked innocently, a wide cheerful smile on her face.

The rest of the boys quickly scrambled back with a look of terror, running away for their dear lives as their ringleader tried his best to catch up.

A hand was thrust suddenly into his line of vision and Ren instinctively flinched.

"I'm not going to hurt you. Need a hand?"

He numbly nodded and grabbed it, standing up and wincing as he stumbled awkwardly. Wordlessly, she threw his left arm over her shoulders and wrapped her right arm around his waist, helping him walk.

"Did they hurt you too bad?" His head snapped towards her upon hearing the genuine worry in her voice.

"Uhh...they got me pretty good on the ribs and stomach" came his quiet, pained reply.

"I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner." She sounded so out of character as regret laced in with her sad words.

"It's okay…" Then with a blush, "Thanks for helping though."

"Anytime!" She beamed at him, her radiant smile and quick change of attitude catching him off-guard. He hesitantly smiled back.

Part II

It suddenly hit him in 8th grade. He's finally taller than Nora.

They had been friends for almost 7 years and he's gotten used to looking up a few inches when talking to her. She was never tall, but he was even shorter as a youth. He didn't mind until 6th grade when all the guys slowly caught up to the girls as they started growing. That is, all the guys except for him. He stayed his glorious 4'11" height as Nora towered over him at 5'1" and the rest of his male peer were 5'3". And suddenly those 2 inches separating him and Nora seemed that much more prominent.

So when he suddenly noticed in 8th grade how instead of looking up, he (finally) looked down to talk to Nora, he quickly rushed to find his height measurement. 5'4". Not the best, but definitely better than before. He mentally cheered for the rest of the day and Nora bit back a laugh every time he purposely grabbed things out of the top cabinet she couldn't reach.

However now, at 17 when he is 5'9", he occasionally pauses to wonder if being tall was all that great if Nora was still 5'1".

Part III

He always hears his peers complain about how reckless she is, swinging her hammer to and fro like she's whacking moles. The comment is almost always followed with a bitter "she's so lucky to even make those insane shots."

And those thoughts aren't completely unwarranted.

He knows how she nearly sent Jaune to an early death when she vaulted him over the gap in the bridge to fight the Death Stalker for their initiation. He remembers how she sails around on her giant metal war hammer. He saw how she sent Yang through the roof just barely before Yang's turkey fists smashed her across the room.

When he first saw her fighting with Magnhild, he was tempted to think the same exact thing; her swings were wild and the moves she completed were far-fetched and just in the nick of time.

But when he quickly found out that in addition to her initial battle instinct, she calculated everything, he wasn't that surprised. He remembered how much she loved math in middle school, how quickly she finished all her math problems, and how she had maintained the highest grade in their physics class.

Somehow, it made sense that she would be calculating her trajectory and velocity right there on the battlefield. Of course, she didn't always make all her shots since she always did rough calculations based on even rougher estimations, but even so, he was glad that she was able to fight and calculate like she did because nothing in the world made her happier. Except for him, of course.

Part IV

He can't quite pinpoint when he started to slowly fall for his crazy best friend. Maybe it was when she helped him build Stormflower in battle school and when he returned to favor with Magnhild, telling her, "That's just what friends do." Or maybe it when he took a hit from a Deathstalker for her and she stayed by his bed all night long. Or maybe that one time she offered him some of her ice cream when his dropped. Or maybe that other time when she jumped into the river after he got pushed in during an elementary school field trip.

Or maybe it was when she beat up Timmy way back in second grade.

Maybe it was everything combined, building up in a slow crescendo.

Either way, it happened and the butterflies he was once able to dismiss as Nora giving him a heart attack from her wild ways is now something he can't just brush off. He doesn't know what to do so he doesn't do anything, trying his hardest to ignore it. But no matter how hard he tries to ignore his growing feelings, whenever Nora yawns and her "Boop" shirt rises just an inch to show toned ivory skin and when she stretches out her long legs, he knows he's absolutely whipped.

Something in the back of his head tells him that this feeling isn't going to go away. And somehow, he's kinda fine with that.

A/N: This is my first story on so yeah. I have this head canon that Nora secretly calculates everything and is a total math/physics nerd beneath all her hyper pinkness because some of her fight scenes in RWBY are absolutely crazy. I figured that part of it was battle instinct, but I doubted that all of it was (she launched Jaune from one end of a bridge to the other, c'mon guys) and I just love the idea of geeky Nora. But I have this feeling that she doesn't like history or language arts. I also have this head canon that Ren has liked Nora long before she realized her own feelings and he just hid it well. Hope you liked it!


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